Teenagers have poured countless hours, laughs, sometimes tears, into making dresses out of these — and other — materials for that oh-so-important milestone: the prom.

Now, Toronto student Anastasia Nikiforova has a new twist on the prom dress: pop can tabs.

It started when she was in Grade 9, helping her friends collect the aluminum tabs to donate for wheelchairs. Come donation day, Nikiforova didn’t manage to get hers in.

“So I had a whole bunch of can tabs,” said the 18-year-old, now in Grade 12 at Earl Haig Secondary School. “Something clicked and I thought it would be cool to have a dress made out of these.”

She kept collecting can tabs for years, enlisting the help of friends and teachers, along with her own resourcefulness.

“Every time I see a can, it’s become an innate habit to take the tab off,” said Nikiforova. “I just look like this ridiculous crazy girl at big events, but it’s OK. It’s for the art,” she said. She’s got about 8,000, spray-painted gold.

By the time she reached Grade 11 or so, Nikiforova settled on a prom dress made from can tabs.

“If you want to be special, then make your own dress. To be very, very special, make your own dress that nobody has made yet.”

She decided a whole dress made of can tabs would likely be too heavy, so the future fashion student found a vintage black Victorian gown and modernized it. She remodelled the top into more of a heart-shape and created can-tab broaches and a chain to hold the skirt front in place. The belt is also can tabs, as is the trim. To set it off, she made a can tab purse.

“In the future I will probably be making a dress that has the skirt made out of all can tabs, but this one is can tab accents,” said Nikiforova. “From far away, you’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s a fancy dress.’ Then when you look up close, you’ll be like, ‘Oh wow, that’s interesting.’”

She estimates she’s got as much as 40 hours of work left before her May 30 prom, stringing together can tabs with gold thread. That’s if the thread doesn’t break.

“It’s evil,” said Nikiforova with a laugh. “You have to do it with a needle, you might as well be crocheting with a needle to get can tabs together.”

Adace Tseng

Adace Tseng had some misgivings about making her own prom dress. She wondered if it would turn out — only sewing for a couple years, she’d never attempted something so complicated — and whether people would look down on her.

Prom is a big deal at Agincourt Collegiate Institute and most of her Grade 12 peers were dishing out big bucks.

“I had to remind myself, I don’t have to be like everyone else all the time, I don’t have to look like everybody else and I don’t have to do what everybody else is doing,” said Tseng, 17.

With the help of The Make Den Sewing Studio, Tseng gathered her materials — Chinese brocade for the top, silk for the bottom — and made her design.

“The upside of making your own dress is that it’s personalized. I guess some people go shopping and are like, ‘This is the perfect dress,’ ” said Tseng. “The perfect dress for me was to be able to design it, to draw it, and then see it come to life through what you’ve made by yourself.”

The end result is a bold red dress Tseng will wear to her prom on June 21 that doubled as a portfolio item for her application to study fashion at Ryerson University.

She got in.

Leah Wilson

Leah Wilson started sewing around the time most kids are still struggling with shoelaces. By 11 or so, she’d badgered her family enough that she got a sewing machine.

Through high school, she made Halloween costumes for herself and friends, including Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and a sailor.

As her prom approached, she looked around stores but nothing caught her eye.

“My style is sort of eclectic and I like to stand out,” said Wilson, 19. “So I decided the only way I could do my prom was by making my own dress.”

Wilson started working on the design in March, but it was April before she really got to work — and then it was sewing for six weeks solid.

“I didn’t finish sewing it until the day of. I was at school sewing in the hallways.”

She finished the knee-length, satin, multicoloured dress inspired by a Carlton Cards design just in time for her prom.

Wilson, who’s finishing off a few credits at Scarborough’s Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts, will go to Dalhousie University in the fall to study fashion.

Louise Marchand

When she was in Grade 9, Louise Marchand and her best friend struck a deal with their parents: if they did well in high school, they’d get a trip to Paris in their graduating year to buy their prom dresses.

In the years since, Marchand’s passion for fashion design deepened. So when she got her trip to Paris in February, she didn’t buy a dress. She bought fabric to make her own.

“I sew all the time so I wanted to basically have the chance to make a really pretty formal dress that would be hard to do, that was a challenge and I actually had a reason to wear it,” said the Grade 12 student at John F. Ross Collegiate Vocational Institute in Guelph.

She started working on the dress, a bright blue gown made with beaded lace, in February. She finished about 5 minutes before heading out to her May 10 prom, where she was voted “best dressed.”

Marchand, who is mainly self-taught, is heading to Fanshawe College in London, Ont., in the fall to study fashion design.

Kirsten Neprily went looking for a prom dress last fall.

“I didn’t see anything I liked,” said the Grade 12 student at Lorne Park Secondary School in Mississauga.

Then it dawned on her. Her aunt had taken costume design at Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S., and even made her mother’s prom dress years before.

So the 18-year-old enlisted her aunt’s help to make a long formal dress with a chiffon silk skirt and sequined crinoline top. The two worked on it a few days a month since December in preparation for Neprily’s May 31 prom.

Her friends were a little doubtful when they heard her plans, said Neprily.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.